


Drained

by zeldadestry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: 100_women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-24
Updated: 2006-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:19:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children are vampires, but a mother willingly gives her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drained

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 014, 'hope', for 100_women fanfic challenge

Every day, precisely at noon, Kreacher enters his Mistress's room. If the day is overcast, he waves his hand to part each of the heavy curtains that hang in front of the windows, filling the room with gray light. If the day is sunny, he leaves the drapes as they are and lights candles instead. She says the sunlight is too bright. She wakes slowly and as she stirs, Kreacher waves his hand once more and the breakfast tray floats up the stairs from the kitchen and through her bedroom door.

"My beautiful Mistress," he croaks, as her eyes open.

"Good morning, Kreacher." He hops up on the bed and helps her to sit, pulls the thick down comforters below her waist. He crooks his finger and the tray sails over to him. She turns her head. "I am not hungry."

"Mistress must eat. Mistress must eat for Kreacher."

There is something consuming her from the inside out. She knows it, her husband knows it, the house elf knows it. Sometimes she dreams that her sons return to her, side by side, holding hands. They return and they stand before her, so beautiful, grown and brave, and she trembles, for she knows they are there to retrieve once more what they have already stolen. Regulus wears the mask as he holds her down. She wants to ask him to take it off, she wants to see his face, but she can not speak. Sirius smiles as he brandishes the knife, as he makes the incision in her chest and reaches his hand inside her. He draws out her heart with ease, because everything that once belonged to her has come unmoored. Everything is crumbling, her heart is crumbling in his hand, no longer flesh, but dirt. She shudders. "I am not hungry."

"Mistress must eat if she wants her medicine."

"No. Give it to me now."

"Mistress must eat if she wants her medicine."

"You stubborn little rat," she hisses, but Kreacher understands he has won, and the tray settles down across her lap. It is the same, every day. There is weak tea, there are two pieces of toast with a thin smear of butter on each, there are ten slices of apples. Each slice is from a different variety, and she can not remember anymore how he does it. Does he cut a slice from ten different kinds, or does he cut one apple into ten and transfigure nine?

She must eat slowly. She will vomit if she does not. Kreacher sits beside her, reads her correspondence aloud if there have been any owls. Sometimes her hand reaches out to scratch behind his ears and he huffs, like any other content pet.

"Look," she says, after some time. "I've finished." Kreacher puts down the letters and narrows his eyes, surveying the empty plates on the tray, the entire bed, as though he suspects she may be trying to trick him. "I ate it all," she insists, "every bite."

"Mistress wants her medicine?"

"Yes."

He goes out into the hallway to Apparate, because the noise irritates her. When he returns, he carries a glass goblet filled halfway with the bubbling silver draught. It takes all pain from her, and her hands tremble with need as she grasps it, drains it. The taste is overwhelmingly sweet and she drinks the rest of her tea quickly to chase it away.

"Mistress is better now."

"Yes. Mistress is better." Some of her strength has returned. He helps her to push the comforters all the way down, to rise from her bed and cross the room to her dressing table. He has charmed the mirror so that when she looks into it, she is as she once was. It is strange, the split between what her eyes and her fingers tell her. She is young and soft, smooth and moist. She is old and rough, wrinkled and withered.

"Mistress is beautiful," Kreacher says, looking at the enchanted version of her.

"I think you did this magic for yourself."

"Everything Kreacher does is for Mistress." He bows.

"He will return, Kreacher. I think it will be today."

"The blood traitor?"

"Yes."

"Shame of his mother, disgrace upon his house."

"When he returns, we will forgive him."

"Kreacher does not forgive."

"No?"

"No."

"Silly little bat," she says and taps her finger against the end of his nose. "Bring me my dark red dress robes."

"My mistress is beautiful in red, but more beautiful in blue. Blue makes the eyes of my mistress shine."

"Red is the color of blood, the blood that is returning to me. I gave my own blood to create him, sustain him. He can not keep from me." Kreacher sulks. "Bring me my red robes. That's an order," she says, gives him a light slap across the face to remind him that she has never been slow to punish.

She can hear him mumbling as he leaves. He has given up on Sirius and hates him, resents her for not doing the same. She can not give him up, not when she has given her baby away. Her baby can never return. She has already lost half her blood, it has drained back into the earth. The return of her first born is the only transfusion that can save her. She slips from her nightgown to rub cream across her chest, down her arms. In the mirror, her breasts are heavy, her nipples enlarged, as they were when she was nursing. If she closes her eyes, she can remember how it felt to have him in her arms, to have his hungry little mouth draining her of milk. Children are vampires, but a mother willingly gives her life. Her eyes open, and though she can feel them tear, in the mirror she is still smiling, laughing, ignorant of despair. "It will be today," she whispers. "It has to be."


End file.
